


Vignettes

by lolneptune



Category: The Goldfinch (2019), The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt
Genre: Infrequent Updates, Las Vegas Era (The Goldfinch), M/M, always thinking of these two :'), post-amsterdam, tenderly gazing, these all exist within the same universe, will update whenever i think of something haha
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-22
Updated: 2021-01-04
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:55:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27664363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lolneptune/pseuds/lolneptune
Summary: Shared moments between the two of them, from Vegas to Amsterdam to wherever they end up next.
Relationships: Theodore Decker/Boris Pavlikovsky
Comments: 8
Kudos: 30





	1. In the morning

I was still in bed when I heard him come out of the bathroom; there were his footsteps, quick and lighter than you’d think, his dew drops falling to the floor. The quick breath of steam came next, and his smell was everywhere. His soap, his fragrance. It was always the same, steady as stone: musk, sugar, opium.

“Boris.” I turned over and looked at him.

He smiled at me in the mirror, back turned. His skin was flushed, his hair wet and all over. He took the towel from his waist and accosted his hair. Bare ass in front of me.

Sometimes I wondered if the way I looked at him was creepy, if it creeped him out. The way my eyes are drawn to him — moth to light. When he takes off another article of clothing, and I follow it with my eyes, track the revelation of his skin. He’s always catching me; I can’t tell if he minds. Sometimes he smiles, and it’s amused, he’s teasing me. Sometimes the smiles are pleased. Other times he searches me, it seems like, an answering plea.

I don’t always understand. He can be a mystery sometimes. Somehow I didn’t know this about him. As I learn the lines of him, I find things just as honest as anything, as earnest and true, and still I don’t understand, like the emotions or the meanings are foreign to me. Words I never learned. The way I catch him looking at me sometimes. Words in there he won’t translate. He’s waiting for me to figure it out.

I like the way he cocks his hip when he stands. He was standing in front of the mirror with his ass to one side like that, I could see his balls, the hair on him, I wanted to kneel at his feet and taste the water running off him. I palmed myself under the sheets, wiped the precum off with my hand so it wouldn’t stain. I was almost sick and embarrassed of myself for how easily, how compulsively he turned me on. I thought of his smell and it killed me. How good it would be to get between his legs and put my nose to his thigh and take him in, the hot breath of him, God.

I met his eyes in the mirror. He was smiling at me. (A little bit pleased, a little bit teasing, a lot of some mysterious else.)

“I know what you’re thinking,” he said, singing it a little in his teasing way.

“Oh yeah?” I muttered, not really thinking about it, just enjoying the sight and the sound of him.

He grinned, met my eyes again. Flicked down, up.

I turned on my side, still facing him, embarrassed. “Shut up.”

He gave that gentle laugh, the one I love. Black eyes merry and crinkling. “Don’t hide. I’m coming.”

He tossed the towel to the back of the chair, missed, left it anyway.

“It’ll mildew,” I protested, knowing he cared just as little as I did, watching in glee as he approached me.

He crawled into bed beside me, turned on his side so he faced me: eyes smiling at me, that little quirk to his lips. I wanted him to push me down and suck my nipples and ride me — I pictured it, looking at his face, thinking of the way he’d come on me, all over my chest, I’d hold him against me and pump my cum in him and feel him slick and sliding in the sweat and jizz between us, a bath of it, his skin electric. I wondered if he could see it on me.

Instead he took my face, so gentle, in his still-damp palm, and guided me like putty to his lips. His thumb on the soft part of my cheek, kneading me, sucking my lip into his wet mouth. So tender that the creature inside me, the one whose name I had only learned so recently, reared up and begged me to hold him, to pull him into me like a fusing cell.

“Boris,” I said again, and it was crazy how much I wanted him, how my body craved him as a substance. “Come on. Take me.”

“You’re so worked up,” he noticed. He put a hand on my chest, I pushed into him; tried to get some friction on my nipples, which had grown erect and sensitive. “What’s this all about?”

“Fuck off,” I said, taking his wrist and guiding his hand over my chest, rubbing against him. “I’m fucking horny.”

“I see that.”

I stopped and glared at him. His lively eyebrows arched at me. I felt angry and embarrassed and turned on.

He brought his hand to my hair and threaded his fingers in, nimble and long, perfect. Tugged.

I sighed deeply, stared up at him. It felt good. I was locked in contest with him. I needed him to win.

“Potter,” he teased me. He smiled faintly. “You slut.”

I frowned, looked stonily back at him even as my cock twitched. I knew he saw.

“Let me guess,” he began. His hand began combing through my hair, fingernails raking gently against me. He only stopped looking at me to blink. “You want me to ride you.”

I couldn’t answer him; it wasn’t how this game went.

“You want this, yes?” He loved this game. He liked to see me beg. He thinks I hate it. I don’t. “Tell me you want it, Potter.”

I gazed steadily back at him. He smiled as he pulled my hair.

“What did I say?”

“Fuck you.”

Another sharp, perfect tug. I hissed this time.

“What did I say, Potter?” Still smiling at me, cat with the canary.

“I want it,” I bit out.

“Yes? What was that?”

“I want you to fucking ride me, Boris,” I spat at him, and he pulled my hair and grinned at me, and I swooned a little. Water or sweat dripped on my cheek.

God, but having him is good.


	2. Black-out

It was black out: past midnight. Boris nursed a stolen jug of vodka between his thighs, leaned back up against the wall and lounging on the bed in Theo’s boxers and his company. Boris and Theo: the latter with his hands twisted, picking at fingernails or a cut or something. Boris’ eyes were heavy-lidded and distant, sparkling black.

  
“So am thinking, fuck this shit, I’ll read what I like,” he was saying. “Professor can suck my dick.” His words were slurred and sleepy, but he was truthfully much better off than Theo; his smaller companion was visibly and thoroughly intoxicated, from the flush of his neck down to the telltale melancholy of his stare, his speech. Boris knew he would need to steal more aspirin for the both of them come morning.

Theo hmm’d in response; Boris knew he wasn’t listening, but it didn’t matter. He was only talking in the first place to give them both something to listen to, some kind of noise.

“You want music?” he’d asked earlier, when it became clear that it that was one of those nights: Theo’s breaths heavier, shoulders weighted, eyes bleak with pain. “Some of your Panda Bear? I want to hear the rabbit song again.”

“That’s a good one,” Theo agreed. He’d been lying on the carpeted floor downstairs — looking at the television but not really seeing. “‘Softest Voice’ is on that album.”

“Ah, you like that one, no?”

“Mm. Sounds older than it is. I don’t know.”

“Sounds like old shoe-staring music, is what. Your Belle and Sebastian, maybe. Velvet Underground.”

“Shoegaze? I guess.”

“You want to listen?”

He’d taken over thirty seconds to answer: too exhausted to think straight. “Nah,” he said finally, listless. “I’m not in the right mood.”

  
So here they were, Boris gabbing on about one of his former English teachers, some bitter old Australian woman named Mrs. White. He was getting ready to slap Potter around a bit if he didn’t wake up soon.

“I think some of these nasty old _ved’my_ become teachers because they think is perfect chance to bully little kids. Can you believe it? They are bullies themselves, is true. They probably get off hurting innocents. I bet they were bullied as kids and now they are getting their revenge.”

“You’re right,” said Theo, the first time he’d spoken in almost an hour.

Boris looked at him and grew silent; he suddenly found that he couldn’t think of anything to say.

__

Eventually he took out _Идіотъ_ and began to read passages aloud in Russian:

“Alright, ready? Prince Myshkin is with the Ivánovna sisters, and here, Agláya says —“

“Can you, um — Can you read in Russian?”

  
“Hm? Why?”

“Just, can you?”

“Konechno, shchenochek. Knyaz' Myshkin…”

Slowly, surely, they drained the bottle, until Boris upended it and made a joke of catching every last drop on his tongue.

“We get our money’s worth,” he’d said, to Theo’s drunken laughter.

Theo was attached to him, as was frequently the case when they’d been drinking this much; his head was very close to Boris’, brown hair nestled in the crook of his neck, nose to his skin. He breathed slowly and heavily, enjoying the vibration of Boris’ voice through his skin, puffs of Theo’s warm breath causing the hair at the nape of his neck to stand on end.

Boris had reached the end of a chapter, let the book rest on his lap in the bottle’s absence; he allowed himself to relax, feeling Theo’s energy was lighter, lifted somehow. In the silence, Theo leaned more heavily against him; he was almost sitting in Boris’ lap.

Boris knocked him gently on the skull with his knuckles — _tupitsa_. Then he took Theo’s shoulder, held him against himself, a steadying hand in case he began to move away.

“ _Sonya_.”

“Hm? What’s that mean?”

“Sleepyhead,” said Boris, sounding fond, exasperated.

“Mm, not sleepy,” said Theo quietly. In a slow, slurry movement, he rubbed his cheek gently along the white skin of Boris’ neck. Tip of his nose against the hollow of his throat. 

Boris turned minutely toward him, just enough to see the side of Theo’s face: freckles across his cheeks, flushed lips, eyelashes half-lowered and long. The dim light softened him.

Theo opened his eyes, and suddenly he was looking at Boris, too. His gaze fluttered low, and then he moved and pressed his lips to Boris’.

It was chaste, curious. The feeling of his soft soft skin. Boris stayed very still, afraid that he might fly off like a startled bird. He knew he wouldn’t remember; he knew they’d never speak of it.

There was that wonderful smell to his skin up close. Not a clean smell, but a good smell. He felt Theo’s little huffs of breath on his face, the press of his nose, his glasses.

It was over very soon. Boris realized he’d closed his eyes; upon opening them, he saw Theo moving away. It sent the winged creature in him swooping up past his throat, then down in a harsh blow to the gut.

But Theo didn’t move very far; he readjusted himself in bed, clumsily shoving at the pillow behind him, then turned on his side and brought his head to Boris’ chest — the left side, over his heart.

“Mm. ’S beating so fast,” Theo murmured.

Boris laughed nervously. How could he answer?

Theo put his hand beside his face, pawing gently at the center of his chest. “Feels nice.”

Boris tilted his head down and watched him, his over-long hair and his bitten nails. Those freckles were distracting.

He wrapped a tentative arm round Theo’s shoulders, held him close. When Theo was this drunk, when there was no chance of his remembering — that was when Boris allowed himself to be careful, tender. It was a shame, but he knew he was on thin ice; Theo was already suspicious of him, the way he stiffened in bed when Boris threw a thoughtless arm across his waist, pulled him roughly off in the half-dark. Carefully casual.


	3. Letter #2

Boris,

I’ve been in New York for almost half a year now. It’s funny: when I stepped off the bus in Port Authority, the city was much colder, harsher than I’d remembered. I think I got used to the big hot emptiness of Vegas — the spread of it, the bare earth as dust beneath our shoes, the massive sky above us and the swollen sun. Times Square felt too loud; too close. Popper hated it — he couldn’t walk one block on those crazy congested sidewalks. I had to pick him up and carry him. I wonder if you’d have liked it.

Hobie has been wonderful and accommodating — more than he ought to be. I feel this (sometimes suffocating) guilt about it. He’s too nice to turn me away; and it’s not like he really had a choice in the first place. I just showed up on his doorstep, looking miserable I’m sure. I was desperate. I’m grateful to him, and I’m also acutely aware that I may never be able to repay this debt I owe him. I try to, I do. I pay Popper’s vet bills, I buy groceries, I run all sorts of errands. I’m an awful cook (you’ll remember) but I help where I can: make toast, coffee. Still make tea the way you like it — boiling hot with three sugars. I drink it and it reminds me of you.

So does the moon. But, here’s the sorry thing — the moon just isn’t the same in the city. It really isn’t. It’s fat and yellow as an egg yolk in that massive Vegas sky, but, for perhaps a lot of reasons, it’s much fainter here, much smaller. It’s a little bit disappointing. The moon isn’t the same everywhere, I guess: you were wrong. I miss it — more than is reasonable. I go on walks at night sometimes and try to find a spot where I can see it clearly among all those buildings and street lights and 24-hour vendors. I don’t know why this process feels so painful; but when I can see it, when it shines in a fingernail silver or round as a dinner plate, bare white or faint behind clouds, it fills me with transient, inexplicable calm. Another of these small comforts; another of these reminders of you.

Still hoping against hope that you’ll follow me. A few months, a year behind. Two years. Three years. More. I’ll take it. I’ll keep waiting for you. (Have been.) Do hope you’ll come soon, though. (Wish I’d begged you to come.)

Actually — and this is maybe a little bit embarrassing — I’ve been writing things down that I mean to tell you when you get here. I mean, there isn’t a single, comprehensive list that I’ve got — I just jot things down when I think of them. Like, yesterday, I saw this kid wearing a Never Summer tee, but he was blond and seemed wealthy — a real snowboarder. Or, last week, I went to this Chinese restaurant with Hobie, and I realized it was the first time since my mother was alive that I paid (or was treated) in full price for Chinese food. Or the time I accompanied Hobie to an estate sale and saw someone walking out with a copy of the White Album.

It’s weird to be back; I didn’t think to account, in my hasty decision to run away, for the very real possibility that being back here, where my mother died, would be hard. It is. I avoid parts of the city altogether because I can’t separate them from the memory of her. Maybe, in time, remembering her won’t be so painful. I’ll remember the good parts, and in remembering the good parts I won’t be thrust into the memory of her death.

I don’t even have to turn down the wrong street to feel it, though. It comes unbidden: sitting down in a diner with Hobie, I remember eating out with her. A white coat; a pink scarf. Bits of jewelry that could have belonged to her. A birthday cake. A song. A whiff of sandalwood perfume. The trees in July (she loved them).

The first week I was back — the first month, really — it didn’t even set in, to be honest. It wasn’t until I fell into more of a routine, began to feel settled (however settled I can feel) that I noticed her presence all around me — in the buildings, the weather, the people. And before that, actually, I was caught up in missing you.

I see washed-up teenagers panhandling on the street corners, under awnings, and I think about you, us. Too-long black hair. God, I was so fucking glad to be away from Xandra, the whole mess of that place — and still, like a thorn in my side, I missed you, or not a thorn but like this empty space in my body where you’d been, I don’t know how long it will take to shrink up again, how long it will take to feel whole without you. That sounds ridiculous, but it’s true.

Now I know I won’t send this to you. Not that I really planned to — not that I’d know where to send it. Are you in Vegas? California? Did you run away to the ocean? Are you learning to surf? (I imagine it.) Does your hair curl in the salty air? Sometimes it used to curl after we went swimming. Are you getting tan? You hate the sun. Will you bring an umbrella with you to the beach? How do you protect yourself on a surfboard — sunscreen? Have you bought a shark tooth necklace? I think it would suit you; I can picture it. It might go along with your leather bracelets. I wonder if you’ll find some beach bums and smoke pot all day and sleep on the beach and wear Rastafari colors (you would). Will you go to school? No, I’m guessing. I hope you find a way to keep reading. Where will you get your books? The library? Do they carry Russian-language novels at the public library? They do here.

Wish you were here.

I had a dream about you last night. Well — I dream about you a lot. I dream about the museum, my mom, my dad; and in between all that I dream about you. Last night I dreamed you were here, in New York, but it wasn’t really New York — we were on a beach. We had a tent. I’m positive I won’t send this letter to you. In the tent, you held me in your arms and we slept like that, one against the other, sardines. It was so warm and so dark. We were so dirty and warm. We had this big mess of blankets over us, and your hair splayed across your pillow, and you were wearing my clothes. In the dream, you took your bracelets off and put them on my wrist. You said I would need them to get us food. I walked out of the tent and through a grove of trees, a parking lot, and then I was in the city. I forgot about the bracelets, and I picked up some food from a bodega that you’d like: black bread, black tea. I found honey and apples, and I brought them back to a place that was like Hobie’s and like my mother’s and like the house in Vegas but not really any of them. Nobody was there but the two of us (and Popchyk). I made us a plate of black bread and honey and sliced apples, and I made tea for you the way you like it, and I brought it all into the bedroom. (There was only one.) You were asleep. I watched your face for what felt like a long time. There were no bruises on you, just hair and skin (scars) and the contours of you. You woke up and stretched and looked up at me (God, I miss you). We ate together in bed — you let me take bites of your food, and I couldn’t taste it.

Sometimes I dream that I’m back in bed with you, those weird hazy memories, fumbling in the half-dark, beer fizzing on the carpet. I always wake up from those in a sweat. Hard, panicked, missing you. (Falling asleep without you is hard.) (Has been since you started going out with Kotku.) (Can’t remember her real name.)

I’ll have to take one of the pills, now, to calm down. I’ve been working through them — plenty left, but I don’t know what I’ll do once I run out. I’m going to take one tonight so I don’t think so much about you. Or — I’ll think about you, and it won’t hurt quite so much. I miss you bitterly.

I’ve only written to you in these journals once before. It was towards the end of my time in Vegas — after you started going out with Kotku. I used to feel sickly, simmering rage at the thought of her. To hear you utter her name, the one you gave her. Of course I know why. You know as well as I do.

Still yours,

Theo


	4. Alone again

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> something I had lying around. may do something more with it later. this one's a little sad.
> 
> i'm working on something longer at the moment, hoping to get the first couple chaps posted soon!

How does the saying go --?  _ You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone _ . Boris thinks of this often. 

Those dreadful days -- unpunctuated by day and night, hours bled into each other, an unfathomable, consumptive pain; the fever dream/bad trip/nightmare of a long weekend fed and watered by drug cocktails and pizza crusts:

Boris, Kotku, her sister all high on pot (and Boris: Xanax, liquor, coke) and acting funny in the Pizza Hut. The great harvest of leftovers on empty tables. Paper bag with grease spots, crumbs. Chilling on the lowest steps of an alley fire escape, chewing white bread and licking sauce, Kotku and her sister speaking in low slurring laughs. 

It was the only food he ate for something like three days. Memory of looking in the long mirror in Kotku’s room, her in the bathroom or whatever -- Boris, long finger on his sternum, tracing the line from his hollow clavicle to his hollow stomach, too-thick hair growing where fat had abandoned him. Ribs like a cage. 

They were, truthfully, already on the outs. Fights here and there. Always bickering. And not -- fun bickering, back-and-forth banter, full of light; it was limp and hard and bitter-tasting. It was not: alive, pliant, sweat-salty. It was not wrestling on the carpet. Boris recalls fighting for her attention, both of them too sober. There was no one else around, and still they were both of them distracted. 

This was months before he left. 

“Hey! Kotyku. Baby.”

Her little white nose scrunching as he approached. She did not even reply!

“What’s up, shawty?”

This made her laugh, a high, whinnying thing. “God.”

He came up to walk beside her -- easy with his height, long legs and all. She was so tiny, it was almost funny to see her gait. It used to make him proud, or something, to see her hurry along to meet his strides. Little legs moving so fast. Now she did not try, and he had to slow down for her. Sometimes it was annoying.

He picked up a piece of her hair. It was fried and shiny like threads of cellophane. Black, orange. Cheap. He liked that. In the sun it glittered.

“Stop,” she said. “I hate it when you do that.”

“Is so pretty.”

She made a tiny huffing sound. “It’s not supposed to be pretty.”

“Not pretty, then! Have it your way -- is, what you say, bad-ass.”

She seemed to slow down deliberately, and Boris scrubbed at his sweaty scalp in the heat. His umbrella was in his bag, but Kotku hated when he took it out. 

“What?” he said when she did not reply.

“ _ Nothing _ ,” came her not-nothing voice.

“Bozhe ty moy.” Dragging a hand down his face. The completely random thought of Potter popped into his mind, and he wondered what he was doing just then. Wasn’t it a nice image? -- Potter on the couch sipping cold beer… Popchik asleep in his lap. “What have I done this time?”

She looked at him, eye-roll implied in the laden, sarcastic swing of her gaze. “I said,  _ nothing _ .”

He groaned aloud. “Always, it is something. Why? Why not have nice afternoon with your boyfriend, who is just trying to compliment you?”

“I don’t care about your fucking compliments,” she said. 

“What  _ do _ you care about?”

“Boris,” she said, “listen to me. Yeah? Please get your bitch-ass out of my face, because I  _ will _ hit you. I’ve hit you before. Yeah? It’s nothing personal. You’re just getting on my nerves today.”

“Blyad’,” he spat. “Are you not my girl? What is the meaning of this?” Truthfully, he was getting sick of this arguing, it was upsetting him, but he kind of felt like a handjob or at least some kissing or something, and she had weed at her place and leftovers. 

“I’m serious, Boris,” she said. She got that hard look in her eyes, the one he didn’t like. It said: I’m not yours. I have shit to do outside of your sad little world. 

“Fine,” he said. “Fuck you, bitch.” If they hadn’t been sober, they’d have gone back to her place together and made out or smoked pot or both. With increasing frequency it seemed their only pastime was smoking so much pot they couldn’t move, couldn’t speak to each other. Sitting on opposite sides of the bed, opposite sides of the room. 

He turned, started walking away. She called his name.

“I’m letting you off the hook this time,” she said. “But next time you call me that, I’m going to beat your ass up. I mean it.”

“Fine,” he yelled. “Suka!”

“I know what that means, Boris!”

“Khuy tebe!”

* * *

When he left, he took with him -- somehow -- whatever fragile thread of interest holding Boris and Kotku’s relationship together. Maybe it was the grief that did it; maybe it was the fear, the loss of safety, of home. Maybe there was nothing left to prove. 

He had been ready to leave her. The plan was to run west; Potter would come with him. 

He had the uncharitable thought that Kotku should have been the one to leave, and not Theo. That if Theo had stayed, everything would be fine. With Theo, life was alright. 

The painting tortured him. Before Potter left, Boris couldn’t see what was so special about it. He would stare and stare and try to see what he saw. He would try it under different lights -- LED, cheap lamp, desert sunset. But always he would end up thinking about him, and not enough about the brush work or the palette or the soulful eyes. That’s what he had said. Soulful. 

It would begin with him unwrapping the thing, holding it aloft. He would look first at the eyes: dark, round as buttons. There was one perfectly black, cast in shadow, and another pricked with light. Then he would remember the night he had seen it first. He would remember, would picture perfectly, the look on his face. How his eyes, blown-out thick and soupy blue, had touched the painting like the most tender hand. He would picture his face and look at the bird and forget about the bird -- eyes blurring a little, he would hold it almost to his nose -- and think about Potter and his voice when he said “soulful eyes” and when he said “I stole it” and when he said “my mother.”

This, to Boris, was what made it priceless -- to think this bird had survived not one, but two catastrophes, both explosions, both lethal. To think his friend, his Potter, had survived with it! Had taken and kept it! Had brought it with him all this way, kept it tucked away like a secret self. And he held it reverently, looking only at the eyes, thinking of this, and wondering at the miracle it was. 

The day he learned his father would move to Australia, he knew -- immediately, as he had considered it before -- that he would run away, and he went upstairs and held the painting and made a plan.

He would go to California -- warm, lovely California. The ocean like a mother’s kiss. He, the moon, and his ocean. Potter would come with him, and they could use the bird -- they could use the bird! -- and make handfuls, buckets of money with it. If they needed to. Otherwise -- if Potter wouldn’t come, well, he would visit him, he would return the painting to him intact like he had not but lifted a finger, he would make do in Cali on the beach and take the bus to Vegas sometimes. He knew already that he would visit. It was not a question at all. Of course they would see each other. Of course he would be there. Theo. Of course.

The problem: he hadn’t planned to kiss him. That moment had been a little wild. Potter, with his silly glasses and a look in his eye, talking about such sweet, irresistible pleasures as spending time together one day -- with money, with freedom, with each other. The kiss was not a promise, an apology, not even a goodbye -- but an expression of  _ I want that _ . 

What did it mean that to think about it made him feel so desperately sad? 

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are my lifeblood! <3
> 
> Come talk to me on tumblr at weirdbody.tumblr.com


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